We need to make better decisions.

Professionally, I'm trained as an expert on nervous system regulation. It's a hot topic right now, which is genuinely cool. All of a sudden the nervus Vagus is common knowledge, the way your lymphatic system works and its role in immunity and regulation is shared on TikTok and Insta.

Who would have guessed thát when I studied and worked these topics for all those years? I would have loved a sneakpeak back then!

With the eagerness to learn the mechanics and the principles comes a lot of awareness. And we can do better. We need to.

The alternative is pretty shitty, because staying dysregulated for long stretches has dangerous effects. On our health. On what we pass on to our children (literally!). On society.

But here's what I found out: besides all the progress we can make on healthy lifestyles, breathwork, safe attachment, food, sleep, holistic treatment, yoga, exercise, being outside in nature: if you're still functioning inside unhealthy systems, if you're not expressing your deepest genius, your creativity, your life's calling, if you keep repeating all the reasons why things won't work out for you, if you keep digging around in your past, your trauma, your stories, none of it sticks.

Not the breathwork, not the osteopathy, not the systemic work, not the yoga. It is just damage control.

It's time to step into your true role. Why are you even here, on this floating rock in space?

To commute every day? To make yourself smaller to be accepted? To follow a bunch of rules you never actually agreed to? To worry about made-up money, in made-up jobs, on made-up time? To obey a**hole employers and leaders?

Yes, I'm putting it a bit edgy. I know this system isn't something you jump out of in one go. But the first steps are easy to take. First, you have to see it for yourself. Feel it. And the plotting toward what would actually work for YOU can start today.

That's MY calling. I want to push over the first domino with as many people as I can reach. Not only for them individually, although we could all use a bit more fire, hope, energy, and fun, but for humanity as a whole. Most of all: for our children. For the future of humanity.

We get to decide, over and over, what we'd love to see happening. I'm pretty clear on that. We can do a lot better than we're doing now, and the way things are heading in society isn't my way.

Let the plotting begin.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred, there are a few ways to go deeper, all free.

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How did we end up here?

I keep wondering how we ended up here.

How did so many people end up feeling lost, exhausted, bored, stressed, disconnected, or all of the above, while still looking like they're doing absolutely fine from the outside?

The wild part is how good most of us are at hiding it. We keep functioning. We work, earn money, raise our kids, make plans, book holidays and answer emails, all while quietly feeling that something isn't quite right. And sometimes there is a warning shot: burnout, illness, divorce, or one of those funky midlife decisions that makes everyone around you wonder what on earth happened.

But sometimes there isn't even a warning shot. You simply become less and less yourself without really noticing it. And when everyone around you seems to be doing exactly the same thing, it becomes surprisingly difficult to see that anything is wrong in the first place.

That's the part I find most interesting. Because I don't think we're only talking about tired people. I think a lot of people have lost touch with their own fire without even realising they had it one day. Their curiosity, their creativity, their weird ideas, their natural genius, the things that make them lose track of time, or the things they would make, explore or pursue if nobody had ever told them they needed to be useful, sensible or profitable.

And I have a theory about why.

Many of us learned very early to become very good at adapting. We learned how to behave, perform, achieve, fit in, be responsible and finish what we started. We learned to listen to instructions, meet expectations and get good at the things that were rewarded. Those are useful skills, and I'm not interested in pretending otherwise.

But we don't necessarily learn how to recognise ourselves in the process. How to notice what lights us up. How to recognise our own genius. How to follow curiosity before we know where it's going. How to listen when something inside us says, "What if?" Instead, we can become incredibly good at consuming. Information, entertainment, other people's ideas, other people's lives. And then wonder why our own feels a little flat.

I'm not saying you need to quit your job, burn your life to the ground and move to Bali. You can start much smaller.

You can start a little business on the side. Take up the hobby you've been thinking about for years. Make something. Build something. Learn something completely unrelated to your career. Spend some of those Netflix hours creating instead of consuming. Follow the weird little idea that keeps coming back, even if you have absolutely no idea where it will lead. You can give yourself permission to be a beginner again. To totally suck at something but having fun learning. Maybe you discover a part of yourself you had completely forgotten was there.

That's what I'm interested in.

Not waiting until someone is forty, burned out, divorced, sick or completely lost before they start asking themselves who they actually are. Not because there is something wrong with us, but because I genuinely believe there is so much more available to us than simply becoming really good at functioning.

And perhaps that's what I'd love to see change for the kids coming up behind us. Less damage control later, and more room much earlier to discover what makes them come alive.

If something in this resonated, pay attention to that. Just follow the thread. And just do it... today is a good day to start.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred, there are a few ways to go deeper, all free.

UNLEASHED, a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day.

Treasure Hunting, where it all began.

Newsletter, more of this in your inbox, regularly.

All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.

Turning the oil tanker (while still paying the bills).

I want to tell you something, and not from the sidelines or a high and mighty pedestal. From the actual muddy trenches.

Because maybe you're pivoting, or thinking about it. Could be career-wise, in relationships, or in life, generally. And I'm in the middle of it too, for the second time in my working life.

The first career pivot was in the period when I became a mother as well: two massive shifts at once. From employee to entrepreneur: I got through it on sheer determination, working six days a week straight, while taking care of my babies, breastfeeding and doing all the admin at night too.

(Not even mentioning the loss of one of my children in that period, although that was a massive kick in the butt to do things MY WAY from then on.)

Now I'm building again: a new business, from scratch. Instead of analogue, one-on-one, live, hands-on work, shifting to a digital role, internationally, in a landscape that keeps changing. With every post, every newsletter, every blog, every pitch, every new offer, my message is still finding shape. And at the same time, my role as a mother of teenagers is changing too.

So yes, a lot of balls in the air, and the bills still need to get paid.

But hey, this is what shifting actually looks like for most people áfter they had the vision: the old during the week, the new in the evenings and weekends. The prework, the education, the building, the messaging, all of it, squeezed into the hours nobody else is claiming or paying yet. It can be a lot. Confronting. Exhausting. And wildly exhilarating and fulfilling too.

I'm not going to tell you it's all smooth and dandy over here, because it sometimes isn't. Some weeks are messy, tired, 1001 mental and literal tabs open. That's part of it. That's the pivot.

Here's what I am sure of: precisely because I'm in the middle of it, I know exactly what it takes to get started.

Not because I have all the answers, but because I know where I stand solid: the foundation. The prework isn't my shaky side. It's where I'm hard as nails. This is where my strength lies, and where my offer is situated.

The first steps I'm offering are entirely self-led, on purpose. No socially acceptable answers necessary, or even allowed. Bye bye, LinkedIn jargon.

Who's supposed to answer? Your gut, your heart, your spirit, your higher self, your ancestors. I don't care what you call it, as long as it's all YOU, minus the conditioning.

Don't underestimate this part. It sounds simple, but it's actually pretty confronting, because it's been trained out of you a long time ago. It is called conditioning. At school, your family, your boss, society. I could go on and on.

You're not starting from zero, you're starting from a huge deficit. You're 0-100 behind in the score. For some, this is actually the hardest part.

The remembering, the laser-focusing, the big vision, the planning that comes next: that's what SPINE is built for.

That instrument, that inner compass, doesn't shake along with my own storm. It works even in my most messy weeks. Especially then.

And after completing SPINE? Is the pivot a done deal? No, it isn't, and I won't promise you that either.

But the foundation is. Found, felt in your bones, anchor and compass recalibrated, all of it YOURS and yours alone. And from there you can turn the oil tanker: your life, your career, your financial responsibilities, without throwing it overboard, without abandoning ship.

You, solidly behind the wheel. I don't know what your voyage will look like. Nobody knows that in advance, not even me about my own.

It is called GROWING, and it is supposed to be messy. That is how we learn, evolve. It needs to be a little uncomfortable for us to actually move.

We like comfort. But deep in your bones you can feel it: it is time to move again, to grow.

About that inner compass, thát I know. Thát I built. Thát's what I hand you.

Just start with the first step, and it will set some wheels in motion. One thing I promise you: it WILL.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred, there are a few ways to go deeper, all free.

UNLEASHED, a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day.

Treasure Hunting, where it all began.

Newsletter, more of this in your inbox, regularly.

All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.

Am I spiritual enough?

I have been sitting on this one for a long time. Maybe for all my life.

So this story is a biggie for me, not just 'another blog'.

In advance: if I kick some shins with my story, challenge your beliefs, this is not what I intend to do by means of attack. I am just asking questions. Probably mainly for myself, but allow me to take you on my journey as we go.

This story is about life. About incarnation. About spirituality. About religion. About materialism. About the feeling of not good enough, not holy enough, not spiritual enough. Imposter syndrome too.

Let's go back to when I was a child. (Yes, my favourite subject but that's where the gold is hidden.)

I grew up in a spiritual family. Originally part catholic, part Mennonite, but both my parents were no active churchgoers, yet practiced spirituality and the belief in God as a profound way of life. So yes, it has been a theme in our family life.

We prayed before dinner, we talked about God. About reincarnation, about karma, about the afterlife. About heaven or hell. About light and dark. About Christianity but also about other religions in the world and in our history. About prayer and living your life to the best of your abilities to be a good human being. How we lived did not feel dogmatic, like the church and actually most religions do feel to me. (And I want to type 'thank god' now, which is funny and illustrative in the context of what I am about to write!)

Because still... why did it always give me the feeling of being not good enough yet, not holy enough, not conscious enough, not enlightened enough, not spiritual enough? Yet?

Like something we always have to strive towards? To ascend to something? Whether it is heaven or 5D?

Why did I always feel a little apologetic about my life? The fact that I was building my life, my little growing family, and was therefore focused on a lot of mainly material things? Like providing for my family, a nice and safe home to build, putting food on the table and clothes on their little bodies? For my deep rooted urge to connect to the land, to animals, to soil, the beach and dunes, to wide skies, to give shape to my biggest dream since I was little (yes, horses, what else?) How materialistic can you get? That's what I have always felt. A bit of shame really. Apologetic almost.

I do not want to eat the bread that represents the body of Jesus, or drink the wine that represents his blood. I do not want to go to church. I do not want to eat in silence to be able to eat fully conscious of all the blessings I receive through my mouth into my body. I do not want to stick to almost religious dogmas about food, about music, about being a good person. I do not want to meditate the way I always thought it had to be done, and be able to live solely from the light, I do not want to go on retreats to Buddhist monks and see if I can meditate my way to ascension and/or levitation. I do not want to do ayahuasca.

I do not want to live in celibacy to show how far I already ascended away from the average human being. I would love to be a vegan/vegetarian, but I do not want to feel shame and guilt if I feel that I need meat or dairy at this stage in my life, because I feel that listening to my body. (Yes, always organic and as ethical as possible!)

I do not want to feel inadequate or stupid because I cannot name all the theories, religious and esoteric leaders, scriptures and movements throughout the history of the whole world.

Do you FEEL the endless web of rules, dogmas and duality I have been dealing with all my life already? Growing up in a very free family, mind you! A loving family that offered me all these perspectives and never forced me into anything! And still... this is MY quest. MY path to explore.

And I think this is exactly what I needed to get where I am today.

In the last couple of years, actually looking back, mainly since I became a mother. With the biggest bang in 2012, when I lost my newborn son Klaasje, things became pretty clear. And got in turbulent stages. Because giving life and holding death were both wrapped into one big, life altering confusing mess. I was thinking about the relativity of time. Of life. Of flesh and of spirit. It was pretty damned holy actually!

Of how your darkest hours bring an infinite amount of light shining of the whole meaning of it all.

And then it dawned on me...

I want to LIVE. I want to embrace LIFE. Life is for the living. I want to enjoy life at the fullest. I live here NOW, in this body, on this planet. And I want to stop feeling guilt or insufficiency for who I am. I am INCARNATED. In the flesh.

I myself am a particle of god/source/creation, whatever you want to name it. We ALL are. Not some guy on a cloud or the Olympus, not the guy on the cross. And realising YOU are as much 'god' as the ones mentioned in the Bible, or other religious scriptures in history, does give you a big responsibility too. Because there is no one left to outsource it to.

The FLESH is the whole sacred deal in itself, that funky and miraculous meat suit, that gives you all the experiences of pleasure, pain, hunger, joy, thirst, sadness, tears, snot, shit, blood, degeneration and getting older, uglier etc etc. And all we do is detach ourselves somehow from it, to feel worthy. Dismissing the miracle of it pretty often.

I want to hold WARM bodies (after holding a tiny cold one. The coldness has etched its way into my soul on that day.)

I want to enjoy myself. Enjoy nature, company, good food, loud laughter and music, yes also during eating dinner. I want to be able to enjoy pleasure in sexuality too, with the man I love and have procreated three magnificent human beings with.

I want to feel free.

I want to feel rage without guilt. I want to be able to put up a fight, if necessary. I want to feel passion and fire. Without guilt, without dimming down to polite, accepted and holy enough.

My rage is sacred. My passion is sacred. My love for life, and earthly stuff, is sacred!

My body, my home, my cooking is sacred. Me caring for others in my own way, is sacred.

We do not need to BECOME anything. We do not need to worship anyone or anything outside of ourselves, no posters pinned above our beds of idols. We do not need to dismiss ourselves, our earthly needs, our desires, our instincts, to become something holy and earn permission to enter the gates of heaven. We already ARE.

Does that mean that I think there is no place whatsoever for religion etc? No, but as long as we are 'allowed' to be ourselves, and have full autonomy. Whenever a religious figure tells us to outsource ourselves, our inner knowing, our instinct, our power, our authority, by using shame, guilt and fear, the red flags pop up in my system. Big time.

And yes, while we are in the flesh, we need to strive for love, light, righteousness, peace, conscience. But we cannot dismiss the dark side of the whole experience on Earth too. There needs to be darkness too, to balance it all out. There will always be grief, pain, sadness, anger, illness. It is part of the earthly experience, a package deal. It is the only way we can fully explore the light. Love, joy, peace, fulfillment, contentedness. Balance.

And even though you and I might try to be the best person you can be, you and I will also function as a bad guy for someone else, in a certain way.

So yes, I think there is a place to perform prayer, meditation, art or whatever form works for you as an expression of your spirituality, but the outtake of it is HERE and NOW. With your two feet firmly planted on the soil of this earth. Creativity and creation. With your hands on your loved ones, a spoon in a pot, a shovel for manure, a hand that plants a seed, changes a diaper, or wipes a nose. We need to honor the snot, the blood, the shit and the mud too, and not be ashamed of it.

Because yes, there is a lot of shame, I cannot leave this emotion out of the equation. It holds a key role. Shame for our needs, our bodies, our urges, our sexuality, our human shortcomings. It has been rooted deeply in us, on purpose I think, to keep us disconnected from ourselves. To keep us small and obedient.

I am totally done with that.

We are all sacred.

So, going back to when I was a child, I visited the Catholic church with my grandmother, who went for the holy communion. She told me that it was the bread of Jesus. I yelled through church "I do not want to eat that old bread!" (Yep, poor grandma...) I guess I always felt things pretty well, what does and what doesn't work for me. Churches give me the creeps, because I feel stuff, and I remember some even darker stuff from loooong ago, not in this lifetime.

And at the same time: the architecture of churches and cathedrals does something very special to me, and stems from something entirely different in my belief. Maybe more about that some other time.

So, this looooooong story is not a story to tell you what to do or how to live or how you should feel or believe spiritually or religiously, au contraire.

This is an invitation for you to feel for yourself. To always feel the freedom to question everything and everyone.

Love, Annemarijn

Why I do what I do.

A long story, hear me out. On purpose. Because talking in Instagram-oneliners is slowly killing me.

I always was a genuinely good girl.

I actually like being good at things, being a good person. I'm punctual, warm, interested in everyone. I have always had a gift for making people feel at ease.

I still do. But not at the cost of myself anymore.

As a physiotherapist, these skills made me very successful, well liked. The endless chatting, my curiosity, the efficiency, the full attention, the touching: it became my trademark.

I was good at the game. But the logistics of it emptied me completely.

So I switched to animals. My own practice, my own rules. I loved it (still do!). But long days, extreme weather, small children at home, always on the road. It was better, but not yet right.

When my newborn son died after living for just two days, something shifted.

From that day I stopped tolerating nonsense. I made a vow to myself after that dark period: from now on my new operating system will be: "only what matters."

And then something happened that pushed me even further.

My other child did not respond well to a certain standard medical intervention. And I started asking questions, which alone gives you a label that makes it very hard to have a mature discussion on the subject afterwards.

What I discovered was that certain questions are unwelcome, that some topics are off-limits in our society. That asking, really just asking, following the thread wherever it leads, can cost you a lot.

I asked them anyway and kept doing very intensive research. For years.

There was no other option for me: a concerned mother does better research than the FBI. Especially mothers who have already lost a child. The dragon was poked.

And then came March 2020. Again a lot of questions that needed to be asked. It wasn't about being right or being heard.

It was about something deeper: autonomy, sovereignty, informed consent, the right to think for yourself and say what you actually see happening.

A lot of people stopped liking me that much. Some got pretty loud about it.

And something unexpected happened: I stopped needing them to.

The muscle of "I'd rather be honest than liked" got trained the hard way. And even though it hurt, it was very liberating too.

Through all of it, all the questions, all the threads I followed, about health, about history, about systems, about what we're told and what's actually true, all the rage I felt about all of it, I kept coming back to one thing.

My conclusion after a zillion hours of research in a lot of uncomfortable rabbitholes is this: it's actually very simple.

Everything becomes clearer when you know who you are, what you actually want, why you're here, how to navigate it all. Not perfect, just real. And that our human life can be pretty messy, but that's the whole point.

Here's what I noticed: most people don't really know who they are and what they want from life.

Not because they're not intelligent or aware, many of them are extraordinarily so.

But in our overly busy lives, studying/working hard, partying hard, lots of noise and lots of distraction, there hardly seems any time or place for contemplation.

We learn a lot, but not so much about ourselves...

Imagine me: seven years of old Latin grammar, but not a single thing about my own values or wildly genius insights.

I'm talking about your true essence, before the degree, before the career, before the mortgage, before the identity you have built to survive in the world.

The sticky sauce of school and society goes on early. And underneath it, still there, still intact, is the version of you that already knew things.

I started thinking more and more of who I was as a child. Dreaming big, feeling deeply, somehow remembering pretty profound stuff. Taking time to go back to little me opened up questions about history, about where we come from, about things I somehow already knew as a child.

That's mine. Yours will be different. But it will be completely, ferociously yours.

It took me some really hard lessons in life to do this kind of deep dive on myself and my values. I imagine this could be more fun for you.

That's why I built SPINE.

A self-led program, just you with a screen and pen and paper, moving through the questions nobody ever thought to ask you. Not as a nice thing to do on a Sunday afternoon, but as a potential gamechanger, on how you see yourself, how you make decisions, and what you actually do with your life.

SPINE has three layers.

The first is Remembering. Going back to who you were before the conditioning got its hands on you, unearthing what's actually yours: your fire, your genius, your original signal.

The second is Direction. Sharpening your inner compass and getting clear on what you actually want, not what makes sense on paper or what other people expect.

The third is Action. Not inspired action as a concept, but actual movement, decisions that come from you, in your own pace, toward what is completely yours.

Together, they give you your blueprint. A starting point to design the life that is actually, undeniably yours.

SPINE is meant as some kind of portal to yourself. From there, the real fun can begin.

My big delusional dream?

Let's make this a quiet, unstoppable kind of movement. Because I feel it in my bones that this is why I am here.

We have spent too long looking outside ourselves, outsourcing our knowing, our choices, our authority, waiting for someone else to tell us who to be and what to do. What I'm building is the opposite of that. Coming back to yourself, grounding in yourself, actually incarnating into this life, this body, this moment.

Embodied. Sovereign. Free. Playful.

That's the movement. One person at a time, remembering who they are. And from there, changing everything around them.

It starts with you.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred, there are a few ways to go deeper, all free.

UNLEASHED, a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day.

Treasure Hunting, where it all began.

Newsletter, more of this in your inbox, regularly.

All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.

Something got taken from you long ago.

Is this just me or is it a collective thing?

Up until a few years ago, being really busy used to be a flex.

Working hard, long hours: totally cool and totally legit. You wore it like a badge. (And an excuse, admit it!)

Then we all woke up, or something. Because we were tiiiired. Exhausted. Keeping all those saucers spinning in the air, so little time, so much to do.

We read the articles, followed the accounts, listened to the podcasts, nodded along.

'More rest. More play. Slow down'. Got it.

We know. We really, truly know it all.

But nothing changes.

Even the rest and the play feels like something extra to schedule.

Because the knowing is not the problem. The loop is the problem.

Life keeps speeding up, getting noisier, more overwhelming.

And at some point you just... freeze. Netflix. Late night scrolling. Drinks. Not because you're lazy. Because you're exhausted from it all in a way that's hard to even name.

Is that rest? Or numbing? Escapism? Survival?

It is pretty ironic: no alarmbells go off when life is 'just fine'.

No doctor calls, no interventions from loved ones. That only happens when you finally collapse. When the burnout hits, when the body gives out, gets seriously ill.

Crisis gives you permission to admit that something has to change. And lets other people have total understanding for your need to slow down.

But what about befóre the crisis? The Monday morning dread? You only feeling yourself during the holiday? The dreaming of that one day in the future where things magically change?

The life that looks perfectly fine from the outside but just doesn't make your heart sing?

We don't have a word for that. And very little tolerance as a society. So we just smile and carry on.

And that is exactly where I think we, as a collective, have an enormous amount to gain.

Wanting more lightness, more joy, more play is not a personality flaw. It is not being spoiled or hedonistic. It's not irresponsible. It's the most adult thing you can do: to look at your life and say, this doesn't have to be so heavy. Just because I don't want it to.

Work cán fit you. You cán feel ownership over how you spend your days. That changes everything. Not the work itself. The fit.

And that can go perfectly hand in hand with the awareness that on some days life just sucks. That it is sometimes hard. That we have to drag ourselves through grief, anger, and just working your ass off sometimes. That's life.

Where did this go wrong anyway?

With a topic most of us don't want to touch. Yet.

I do.

Think about a child of four or five years old.

They know exactly who they are. What they like, what they don't. When they're tired. What makes them light up. Completely, naturally connected to themselves.

Toddlers are total badasses.

And then school starts.

Suddenly you are supposed to sit still for hours, whether your body wants to or not. You are allowed to eat and drink at a fixed time, hungry or not. You are only allowed to go to the bathroom with permission. (Devastating really for your digestive health!) You learn theoretical things in a specific order at a specific speed, whether your brain works that way or not. You swallow your emotions because there is no time and no place for them in a classroom of thirty. You learn that your needs come second. You learn to adapt, not in a slight way. No, big time. You learn to perform instead of to just be. Test, grades, repeat. Little room for true creativity, for the things that light you up.

We do this for twelve, sometimes eighteen years.

Fluorescent lighting. Little movement. No nature. Total sensory overload. Six hours a day, five days a week, for most of childhood.

Hardly any hours in the day left to play, rest or socialize. Because... homework.

If you are tired, emotional, overstimulated, sad, energized: doesn't matter. Just show up, suck it up, and do the work.

Your parents did it too. Don't expect too much help from them, because they are legally obliged to put you through this whole process. They did it too, and they turned out 'fine'.

And then we wonder why we hit 35 or 40 and don't know who we are anymore. Why we feel lost. Why nothing feels like enough.

We smirk a little: "he or she is having a midlife crisis".

We were never lost.

We were just very, very well trained to disconnect from ourselves. To be obedient. And we were praised for it. Seen.

If this were happening to our young dogs or horses, we would call it.... (fill in yourself).

But we endured it ourselves. So our kids must too. And in a future we can't even begin to imagine, we're still handing them obedience training and fact reproduction and calling it education.

We can do better. We need to do better. Asap.

I think we all have a little Stockholm Syndrome around this. And I get it. It's uncomfortable to look at. And pretty hard to change this oiltanker of a system. (Believe me, I am trying in my own way and that is a whole exhausting saga in itself!)

But this is also exactly where the way back to ourselves starts.

Not by digging through trauma for years. Not by waiting for the crisis that finally gives you permission.

But by getting curious about what it is you actually dó want. What makes that knot in your stomach loosen. What lights you up. What you were in essence before the world got its hands on you.

And one more thing, not only for yourself, but for future generations: make this topic mainstream. Talk about it. Question things. It is time.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred, there are a few ways to go deeper, all free.

UNLEASHED, a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day.

Treasure Hunting, where it all began.

Newsletter, more of this in your inbox, regularly.

All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.

You already know enough.

You are a creative being.

Besides creating babies, which is simultaneously the most ordinary and most miraculous thing we can do (if it is given to us), people are capable of bringing amazing things into existence that were not there before.

Art. Music. Language. Recipes. Businesses. Architecture. Dance. Medicine.

The list is endless.

We are also, it has to be said, remarkably good at creating stories about why things can't work out. Overthinking. Procrastinating. Worrying.

Because now is not the right time.

Because we need more money first.

Because we need one more certificate, one more round of therapy, one more year.

Some people are so gifted at generating excuses that they construct entire philosophical frameworks for why they should not do the thing they secretly want to do.

Hell, we don't even dare to go there in our dreams!

Being 'realistic'. Or polite. Virtuous.

Also known as: keeping yourself small.

I am not asking you to be an asshole, I am asking you to give yourself some room to dream, and be delightfully delusional.

For a long time, being able to rationalize and explain things well gets you quite far in school, in business, in life. It was actually a winning strategy since primary school.

The problem is that somewhere along the way, a lot of us became better at analyzing our life than living it. Better at theory than at creativity.

And then AI entered the game.

Within seconds it generates theories, summaries, strategies, arguments and explanations that would have taken us hours or years. Which is funny. Because a lot of what we quietly believed made us valuable has just become abundant in the blink of an eye.

Which leaves a much more interesting question on the table.

If everyone has access to information, analysis and explanation, what is actually left?

Your creativity.

Not just for making money. For living your actual life.

The ability to imagine something that does not exist yet and move towards it. The ability to choose. The ability to play. The ability to feel and follow your intuition. The ability to create an experience rather than another explanation of why you are not ready to have one.

I have taken quite a few detours. Decent at academics. Good at memorizing things. Genuinely useful in complicated conversations or a round of Trivial Pursuit. I understood a lot, but I still felt a bit lost.

Even though I already was living a pretty cool life and was using my intuition and gift for literal feeling to my advantage while working as an osteopath.

You just know it in your guts... when somewhere in the undercurrent something starts to feel off... misaligned.

An unexpected turning point arrived when someone asked me a couple of ridiculously simple questions. About MYSELF.

My most primal wishes, dreams, feelings.

They cracked open a whole tsunami of ideas and insights that had been sitting there since I was a child.

And I was on the loose with a whole bunch of new questions on that same primal topic: YOU. I was being wildly creative, yes!

That one little vague idea has grown into an online platform I have been building entirely on my own, with a weird conviction that this needs to exist in the world.

My motto: simple is best.

Turns out a few exactly focused questions can crack open an entire field of possibilities for people.

Now I am receiving messages like:

"I can't even remember what was holding me back before."

"I forgot I had magic in me."

Still blows my mind a little, every single time.

People tend to underestimate the simplest things. Human beings love to make things complicated. It makes us feel legit, I think.

But maybe you do not need another theory about why you are stuck. Maybe you need to use the creative capacity you were born with on the one project you keep postponing: your best life.

If you feel a little sizzle in your belly reading this, or you just got goosebumps: this is exactly what I work on with people. Come find me.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred, there are a few ways to go deeper, all free.

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Man in the mirror.

There's this one song that always makes me cry. Not from sadness, it just hits a tender spot inside me ever since I was a child. And it is always at exactly the same point in the song.

I read somewhere that it might have to do with the specific frequency the song is broadcast at. That it's a frequency intentionally designed to move you. Whether that's literally and scientifically true or not, I can't say. I just knów, by felt experience.

The song is 'Man in the Mirror'. Yes, Michael Jackson.

Me and my family were húge fans back in the day. Always with the VCR ready to record stuff off TV. Scrapbooks full of clippings. Dancing and singing to his music all day long. We even went as a whole family to the 'Bad'-concert in Rotterdam in 1988, us small children still. (Thank you, mum and dad! Pretty epic memories!)

There was a period where I lost touch with MJ for a little while. I did not feel his newer music the way it moved me before, and of course there were all those allegations. But I cried the morning I quickly checked the news at work and saw that he'd passed away.

I am still a huge fan. I LOVE his music. The man was special, for so many people, and still is.

(We even did our opening dance at our wedding on a MJ-choreography. Ambitious, yes. No video footage available. Yep, this story gets weirder and weirder.)

Anyway. This story isn't about Michael Jackson as a person. This is about his song 'Man in the Mirror'.

Even now, every time I hear this song, and that choir kicks in around 2.50 minutes, I well up. I can't help it. It's like a button in me that just goes pooof.

Why does it get me like that, ever since it was released in 1987? (almost 40 years ago already, aaargh!)

Because the message couldn't be more on point.

It all starts and ends with you. How you meet the world. How much of your power you give away. How much love you put out in the world. What you stand up for. How you help others. Nature. Animals. Yourself.

We're living in strange times. You can love someone deeply and still be standing on completely opposite ends of the political spectrum. Or at least, that's how it looks. Why? Because every single topic has been politicised. And every last bit of nuance has been scrubbed out of every debate, by media working on behalf of politicians and NGO's. Everything is framed.

Easy, right? That's exactly how they want us: at each other's throats.

We fight each other, or we don't dare to speak up, while at the top, the puppet masters keep playing their divide and conquer games while getting filthy rich.

All of them. Not just the ones the mainstream labels as 'the bad guys'. All of them.

And good luck navigating your way through all of that. You can't just trust what you see and hear anymore. Something might be completely one-sided. It might be AI.

Our media and politicians feed this. Even school textbooks feed this. Our history books feed this. Fake news comes from every corner and is as old as the world. Google is trained, AI is trained, factcheckers are trained. Things aren't what they seem. Everything is upside down. Total chaos, yes.

How do we deal with this? How do we even keep up? So much is happening, everything moves so fast. Do we even need to keep up?

Are we built for this overload of information as human beings? Can we carry this continuous all consuming weight? I don't have the answer. Everyone has to figure that out for themselves.

What we all cán do is look at ourselves. The man in the mirror.

And change the only person you actually cán change: yourself. By being a good person. Showing compassion, but also protecting the people around you, your inner circle. Setting boundaries. Keeping your power with you. Protecting your freedom. Taking responsibility. Knowing yourself really, really well.

Using your discernment and your intuition as the golden standard instead of any expert, factchecker or news outlet whatsoever.

I have thought about this a lot. I've experienced firsthand how fast you can be painted in a bad light, even when you genuinely mean well and feel concerned.

No matter if you are trying to do the right thing, you are going to rub someone the wrong way on some point. But if you're coming from a rock-solid foundation, you can handle that without being triggered. Grounded. Calm. Powerful. You can weather the storm. Of criticism, framing. People who push against your limits. People trying to put you in a box.

It will bother you a lot less. It might still sting, but at the end of the day, it's clear. Your inner radar for nonsense and fake news gets sharper than any screaming news source out there.

So my contribution to these complicated times will be about as basic as it gets. I'm not the last person to climb the barricades when it's really needed. But it can all be even simpler than that.

Going back to yourself. Back to your core. Your spark. Your strength. Your light.

That level of finetuned and steady uniqueness can't be labeled.

Left or right. Good or bad. Black or white. Pro or contra. Good luck trying to label 8 billion unique flavours and colours, all of them knowing themselves deeply. You simply can't divide them or turn them against each other.

So put on Man in the Mirror, turn the volume up, sing along as loud as you can, and feel what it does to you. What inspired thoughts come up.

And then come find me. Because this is exactly what I work on with people.

Love, Annemarijn

Lyrics Man in the mirror

I'm starting with the man in the mirror 

I'm asking him to change his ways 

No message could have been any clearer

If you wanna make the world a better place

Take a look at yourself and then make the change

You gotta get it right while you got the time

'Cause when you close your heart 

Then you close your mind

Just lift yourself, you know

You've got to start with yourself 

I've got to be that man,

You got to move

You got to stand up and lift yourself now 

Liberation Day.

Every fifth of May, the Dutch celebrate Bevrijdingsdag. Liberation Day.

A day that celebrates freedom, gratitude and joy.

And also gives me a slight pinch of discomfort.

The fourth of May we remember the victims of World War II. We stand still. We say the words that have become ritual:

“Never again.”

Wreaths are laid. Silence is held. Stories are told. Those stories are necessary to keep telling.

And then… life continues.

But here's the part that doesn't sit well within me.

Because while we speak those words, our governments still fund wars. From our tax-money.

Alliances tighten (not all very democratic, btw). Narratives shift. Conversations about sending our children into war quietly re-enter. The language of "defense" slowly starts to sound like preparation.

There is much more effort being put in preparation for war than in peace negotiations. Unbelievable, but true.

Questioning this war-drum narrative is not appreciated by the way. It gets you sent to conspiracy-theorist jail straight away. End of discussion. Handy!

But here I am, frantically typing away.

You can feel it all around us, if you're paying attention. Not loud and obvious, but totally present.

Freedom, here and nowadays, is often measured against the darkest chapters we know. Compared to occupation, to war, to holocaust, to fear… yes, we are free.

But is that the bar?

If the only way we recognize freedom is by comparing it to oppression and genocide, we're already playing a strange game.

There are other ways to lose freedom. Slower and quieter ones. More convenient ones.

Not with tanks on the street, but with systems you stop questioning. Not with force, but with gradual agreement, or disinterest. Not all at once, but step by step.

Like a frog in warming water.

At what point do you notice?

When everything you do is tracked and limited? When your behavior becomes data 24/7? When choices start to feel… guided? When autonomy slowly turns into compliance dressed up as safety, convenience and good citizenship? When it is much too late to act?

A freedom lost is almost never regained, history learns us. And we lose a lot of little freedoms at a very high speed. For safety. For the climate. 'For the greater good.'

It all sounds like a no-brainer. But the price is mindbogglingly high.

War, fear and division between people makes the most money for those who profit. Guess what: it isn't you that is profiting... you can send your sons and daughters to the front.

The real question isn't "are we free compared to back then?"

It's:

How free do you actually feel, right now? And how will this evolve for our children?

Freedom isn't just the absence of war, it's the presence of choice. Of voice. Of ownership over your own body, your time, your land, your money, your education, your beliefs, your direction.

The right to be allowed to question things.

And that's where it starts to become pretty uncomfortable.

Because now it's no longer about governments or history. It's about YOU.

Do you speak when something feels off? Or do you stay quiet because it's easier? Do you question what you're told? Or do you outsource your thinking and autonomy? Do you choose consciously? Or do you drift along with what's presented?

No one is coming to "hand you" freedom in its fullest form. Not then. Not now.

Freedom is something you recognize, something you claim. Something you protect, not just in extreme moments like war, but in the small, everyday decisions that shape your life and our society.

So no, this story is not about dismissing what was fought for. Things are not that black or white. Especially not on this theme. It's about respecting the horrors of war enough to stay vigilant.

Not from fear, but from awareness.

Because "never again" only means something if you're also willing to see what's happening right here, right now.

In the aftermath of World War II, something shifted.

What happened was so dark, so extreme, that it didn't just wake us up… it also made us almost too careful. Too polite. Too grateful.

We became a little too comfortable too. Relieved to be "free."

And we've been told that story ever since. How lucky we are, how good we have it in the Western world. What a cool and free country we live in.

I know, I used to think so too. And to a big extent there lies truth in that.

But when I started looking beneath the polished surface there are a lot of cracks to be found in our cool government and society.

While we were looking at what we escaped after WW2, and were looking at countries far away and how things were dealt with over there on the news… we stopped looking at what was being built right under our noses.

Not loud. Not obvious. But steady and pretty much behind the scenes, up to the point that it becomes harder and harder to stop it from being implemented.

Because the decisions are made on a greater scale: global/European etc.

And somehow we silently agreed to all that.

Maybe the real question should be: did "never again" make us extra vigilant… or did it make us actually... more compliant?

For me, a lot of systems that are being built and implemented right now, in our 'free Western world', are terrifying to me. And the silence, the disinterest even around it, terrifies me even more.

Speaking about it gets you labeled a conspiracy theorist straight away. Why? Because it is uncomfortable to look at. I get it.

This story may stir a lot of feelings in you: anger, fear, disbelief, whatever. And that is alright.

This is me, performing my freedoms. Freedom of speech, of thoughts. Speaking up.

We do not all have to agree with each other. That is the whole point.

I refuse to live in constant fear, but I refuse to live in dull and satisfied compliance even more. So that means that I have to speak my truth, even when my voice shakes.

Freedom doesn't live in comfort or blind trust in authorities. That never ended well in history. It lives in what you're willing to see… and what you're willing to do with it.

Love, Annemarijn

This might piss you off (or make you scream YES!)

Let me shout out to my kind of people. Also those quiet ones in the back.

The ones watching, feeling it. The ones not fully buying what they're being fed anymore.

Let's get one thing straight: I'm definitely not here on earth to play small so everyone can stay comfortable. Not here to be obedient to abstract systems I never chose when I was born into this world. Not here to be a content, well fed and domesticated human.

In my own way, I'm standing up.

Not by following rules I never agreed to. Not by performing in systems that were never built for me.

Unpopular opinion: you cannot comply your way out of something that was designed to keep you small.

Yeah. I said it.

(If that makes you a little uncomfortable, that's usually where it gets interesting.)

You knów we are being played. Distracted. Kept busy, tired, slightly numbed out… just enough to not question too much.

But something is shifting. More and more people are seeing through it. Feeling the cracks, refusing to keep pretending everything is fine.

We're done. It's as simple as that.

This world ís going to change anyway. Not by fighting harder or screaming louder. But by us stepping out of the loop, one by one.

And here's the deal: that whole stepping out thingy is actually pretty simple.

Just say 'no' and start to create the life that you really, really want.

How?

Stop outsourcing your authority. (You do it on countless levels on a daily basis.) Stop waiting for permission. Start living by your own standards, setting your own boundaries. And sticking to that.

That's the code we need to crack. And once you see it… you can't unsee it.

I know most of you are reading this, nodding "yes", and at the same time feel a little deflated. "Okay… YES! But shit… now what?"

Good. That's exactly where you need to be.

Because yes, we ARE tired. Angry. Frustrated. Pretty desperate often too. Fed up with all the noise. The narratives. The control. The polarization. The manufactured crises. And most of us do not know where to start anymore.

Standing up for yourself came at a price too. Ruffling feathers and setting boundaries is not how we are supposed to behave. You made some noise. You wanted change. And you're still waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

It all comes down to YOU.

Not everything around you. Not other people, not the world, not 'the system'. YOU.

Not fixing anything. You aren't broken. Not healing anything. That's a never ending story. Just keeping it simple. And having a little fun doing so.

Let's drop that whole "behave like an adult" thing right now. It's a trap. You can work hard and have fun doing it.

The time has come to play. To let it flow and be easy. And to find out what that means for you specifically.

This is exactly what I work on with people. If you feel the YES, you know where to find me.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred, there are a few ways to go deeper, all free.

UNLEASHED, a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day.

Treasure Hunting, where it all began.

Newsletter, more of this in your inbox, regularly.

All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.

If this was about dogs or horses...

My horse is getting older. By most standards she would have been labeled broken years ago. Hypermobile. Lots of little wears and tears. Uncooperative in work and no, she has not really been ridden for years. High maintenance in every imaginable way. If you measure worth by productivity, she has long since failed the test.

And yet she is living her best life. Spicy as ever.

And I love and cherish her to pieces. Best horse ever for me and my family.

I tend to her carefully. I monitor her comfort, her mobility, her appetite, her energy. Yes, she has off days. Yes, she has limitations. And it gives me gray hair galore. But I do not only watch her problems. I watch her spark. Her curiosity. Her joie de vivre.

And when it is time to say goodbye one day, I will know. And I will act.

But we are not even close to having that discussion.

I see the same pattern in my older canine clients. Aging bodies. Funky minds. Stiff joints. Grey faces. And owners who know and see them more deeply than ever before. Who adjust the walks to actual capacity. Who build rhythm around the individual instead of forcing the individual into a fixed rhythm.

Strangely enough, many of these animals are doing better in their later years than they ever did before. Not because they are healthier on paper, but because they are finally understood. Because it feels more natural to adjust to the quirks of an elderly dog than to a young one.

We somehow accept that aging requires responsiveness, and that makes things easier. It is funny and lovely to notice.

And that makes me wonder about us as human beings.

How well do we understand ourselves? Our nervous system. Our needs. Our nature.

Why do we so often wait until stress, illness, or burnout forces us to listen? Why do we push and struggle through misalignment for years before allowing ourselves to design a life that actually fits our temperament, our energy, our genius, our natural rhythm?

If you are reading this, you probably already sense when something is off. You are aware. You feel the friction. You notice the quiet voice that says: "this does not fully fit."

But then there are our children.

We wake them early. We rush them through mornings. We sit them at small desks under artificial light for hours on end. We ask them to suppress movement, curiosity, hunger, thirst, even basic bodily impulses, so they can strengthen one very specific muscle: the cognitive one. We schedule them tightly. School on time. Homework on time. Sports on time. Bed on time. For the biggest part of their young lives.

Because we are supposed to. It is 'normal' and even obligatory.

We did it too as a child and we turned out 'fine'. (Uh-uh, rrrrright....)

If we structured a horse's life like that, many professionals would immediately advocate for more daylight, more movement, more autonomy, more species-appropriate living. The same goes for dogs. The conversation around natural environments and ethical care has gained enormous momentum. And that is a wonderful thing. However, in some circles it even tips into harsh judgment toward anyone who does not provide the utmost perfect conditions.

And yet.... we barely question the human equivalent.

We have become better and better at advocating for natural living for animals. Less so for ourselves. And yes, I am going to say it plainly: even less for our children.

With animals we ask, is this life still good for this individual?

With humans we often ask, is this individual still functioning inside the system?

Those are very different questions.

This is not a dramatic call to tear everything down tomorrow. It is an invitation to notice the blind spot. To observe how easily we recognize natural living requirements in a horse or a dog, and how quickly we override it in ourselves.

Care is not perfection. It is responsiveness. It is observing the being in front of you and adjusting accordingly.

Yes, there were times in history when children worked in mines and factories. That was way worse. But having a dramatic baseline in a man-made, industry-driven system does not mean we have to settle for whatever improvement followed.

Maybe it is about time for this conversation. Not as rebellion, but as recalibration. Not from ideology, but from biology.

Because when you learn to read 'joie de vivre' in an old horse or dog, it becomes very difficult to ignore it in yourself. Or in your children.

Once you start paying attention to the spark, to your nature, you cannot unsee it.

This is exactly the kind of conversation I have with the people I work with. If something in here stirred, you know where to find me.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred, there are a few ways to go deeper, all free.

UNLEASHED, a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day.

Treasure Hunting, where it all began.

Newsletter, more of this in your inbox, regularly.

All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.

The boy that wasn't meant to stay.

My body always feels it before my brain thinks of it. Not fit. Brainfog. Introverted. It comes with the weather, the smell of nature, the daylight, all connected to these days...

The days in which I gave birth to our beautiful son Klaas, and the dreadful 46 hours that followed.

He did not make it. He couldn't.

And it was ok for him. For the better. At some point the point of no return had been crossed.

He was so very much wanted. He was (is!) so much loved. He was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen. But he is not here.

Instead of taking our boy home to nurture and feed him, we went home with a little casket. Had to choose a little grave and rewrite our birth announcements. It was all so f*cking wrong and painful. Surreal. The shock was too big to grasp. How can a big and strong boy like him die???

I was so empty (literally) and wounded. I still am in a way. It was deeply traumatic to be a woman who just gave birth and to have empty arms. Overflowing with milk. An open end and an open wound. (Literally, the tight scar above my pelvis is a daily reminder of that). Sometimes this part rears it's ugly head.

Something died inside of me those days in 2012. And an even bigger part ignited.

Since that day I have not been the same. I couldn't care less about everyday fuss anymore. Superficiality. Small talk. People trying to reign over me or my family. Keep it out of my sight, for your own safety.

Those days, and the period that followed, forged me into carbon steel. Dragon mode activated.

Have I lost my ability to love?

No way. It has grown. Exponentially.

I am not afraid to love and lose. Been there, done that. Lived to tell.

When you have survived your worst nightmare, it has in some twisted ways some very empowering side-effects.

So my son became my secret superpower.

My spiritual backup team.

The person I spoke to deep in the night, when the whole world was dark and quiet.

My highway to intuitive strength.

My kick in the butt to grow and evolve.

Our guardian angel. Watching over my loved ones, making sure the sun shines on our birthdays, sending little sparrows everywhere we go, and making sure we find a good parking spot wherever we go.

Works. Every. Time.

This year, it has been 14 years already. He would have been a big guy by now probably. Same dark hair and sturdy build as my husband and his little brother. Sometimes I still dream about what he would have been like. How it would have been with an extra man in our family.

It becomes a little less raw and painful with each passing year. It does.

I had quite the revelation recently. About the fact that I somehow needed Klaasje to guide me to the 'celestial hotline'. To guide me to the awareness of us being our own little spark of god, living a human life in a human body on earth.

I am not a religious woman. Never was and never will be. I do however have a very strong belief and knowing of god. Not as a being or a person. But as a particle, a flame in all of us and everything around us.

And the whole Klaasje saga has propelled me on that path. I was not talking to him all that time. It was my flame connecting with his flame, and all the little flames around us. Doing a practice run for now.

This past year I have decided to put these superpowers to an extra good use, building my life even more around it.

It feels right.

But not these days. These days we do our little spring hibernation.

Me, writing down my yearly musings on the topic. Us as a family, not working, going to school or doing other mundane chores, but spending time with each other. Visiting his little grave and the city we lived in. Our own traditions.

There is so much beauty in hugging each other's warm bodies. So much love and gratitude. Appreciating and celebrating life. Klaasjes short life and our own lifes.

It is always a good time for cake.

This is part of my story. But I keep rewriting the script with every new day I have the gift of being alive.

Love, Annemarijn

The only side I am picking is humanity.

Everything feels big right now. Bigger than us. Darker and more complex than we quite know how to process. There is always something new to react to, something new to condemn, something new to defend. Every week we are handed another storyline and expected to take a position immediately, loudly, publicly.

And yes, I go down rabbit holes. I read and watch things most people would scroll past, pretty dark topics too. I listen to voices I don't necessarily agree with. I follow threads that make my stomach tighten. Not because I enjoy it. Because I care and I feel I need to. Because not looking feels worse than looking. Because I feel light needs to be shone over the dark. I believe that different people have different 'tasks' in this time on earth.

But I have had to admit something. There is a difference between observing what is happening and being dragged into it. Caring does not require me to be consumed. Awareness does not require me to become reactive.

It is very easy right now to get pushed into picking sides. To feel morally obligated to join every battle that flashes across a screen. To believe that if you are not visibly fighting, you are complicit. Meanwhile we are exhausted. Tired of the noise. Tired of the finger-pointing. Tired of being emotionally recruited into things that live far outside our direct sphere of influence. Tired of all the information. And be honest: we receive way too little information to be able to really 'in the know'.

These games of divide and conquer are being played for maybe thousands of years already, or even longer than that. Who knows? Maybe it goes even further, intergalactical. We don't know the whole story. History has always been rewritten time and again, just like 'they' wanted to.

Are we even meant to know what happens around the whole world all of the time? Or is it more healthy, logic, natural and human to keep your focus on your own surroundings, your own family? The things you have direct influence on? Where you are needed the most. I don't have the correct answer.

Divide and conquer is not new. It just runs faster now. And while we argue about the headline of the week, something deeper hums underneath it all. Sometimes the things feel so big and so dark that we almost circle around them collectively. We talk about the edges. We debate the visible players. But the unease remains. I refuse to pretend nothing is happening. But I also refuse to let myself be swallowed.

The only side I am picking is humanity. Something we can ALL do without knowing all the ins and outs of everything.

Not left. Not right. Or what that is supposed to mean nowadays. Not whatever ideological tribe demands loyalty this month.

Nature. Humanity.

Humanity is not an abstract concept. It is people. Women, men. CHILDREN. It is small. It is local. It is how I speak to my children. It is whether I pass on my fear or metabolise it. It is whether I stay steady in my own nervous system when the world feels unstable. At the same time, humanity is the biggest player in the field. The 99%.

We are living inside enormous abstract systems. (Digital) money. Surveillance. Invisible power structures. Industry. Internet and media. Governments and taxes: locally, nationally, globally. Rigid educational systems. Institutions and narratives that shape perception in ways we barely notice (although it is becoming more and more loud and obvious). We were born into these systems; we did not consciously choose them. It is easy to start believing that they are more real than our own lives.

They are not.

My body is real. My home is real. My children are real. The way I earn money and spend it is real. Nature is real. The way I choose to respond when fear is sold to me is real.

No one is coming to fix this for us. No secret saviour, no perfect leader, no dramatic unveiling that resets everything overnight. And strangely, that does not depress me. It steadies me. Because it means I stop waiting for help. I stop outsourcing my authority. I stop behaving as if I am a tiny pawn in a game that someone else controls entirely.

I can see the game without playing every round.

Maybe the real crossroads we are standing at is not primarily political or technological, but existential. One path leads further into abstraction, into endless digital layers, into living in reaction to narratives about narratives. The other path is less glamorous. It looks like autonomy. Responsibility. Health. Love. Common sense. Adulthood. The organic way, as I like to see it.

Not spiritual bypassing. Not pretending darkness does not exist. Not chasing transcendence. Integration. The willingness to be fully human in a time that constantly tries to pull us out of ourselves.

We talk a lot about awakening, about consciousness, about enlightenment. But perhaps what we actually need is maturity. The capacity to hold complexity without collapsing into cynicism or hysteria. The strength to acknowledge corruption when you see it. Yes, also in your own country. The humility to realise that the sacred is not somewhere else. It is here, in the ordinary, in the choices we make every day.

I do not want to burn the world down. I want my children to grow up inside it. As free beings.

I want planet earth to be healthy, and all of its inhabitants to thrive.

I want to feel light again, not because I am ignorant of what is happening, but because I am not letting it colonise my inner world. I want to play. To build. To raise children who can think and feel for themselves instead of merely react. I want to participate in this human experience consciously, not as a permanently outraged spectator.

Maybe you feel it too. That gnawing sense that you do not quite fit the system, and yet you still live in it. You pay bills, taxes. You participate. You try to do right by your family. There is a tension there. You want to live freely, but you are not disappearing into the woods. You are here, in society, in the mess.

Maybe being human was never about escaping the mess. Maybe it is about inhabiting it consciously. As sovereign beings with the ability to love and care deeply. Without being dragged into a game that isn't yours. Wars that aren't yours.

Choosing love over fear. Love for each other, love for the earth and all its inhabitants.

The only side I am picking is humanity. Not because it is neutral, but because it is foundational. If we cannot stay human in the middle of all of this, nothing else we fight for will matter. That is the ground I am standing on.

Love, Annemarijn

Rewriting the script.

I am all in for rewriting the rules of the game. Not just the professional one. The bigger one. The strange, beautiful game of being a spark of consciousness walking around in a human body, trying to make sense of it all.

Following rules has never been my strong suit. Hand me a protocol or neatly written instructions and my brain immediately starts scanning for loopholes, exceptions, alternative routes. That's simply how I'm wired. And it stronger than me, stronger than my urge to be the nice girl.

So no, I was never exactly perfect employee material. And honestly, I don't think most of us are, at least not in the way we're doing it now. We just learned to behave that way.

The funny thing is, I believe every single one of us gets to rewrite their own playbook. You can question rules and still be kind. You can do things differently and still keep yourself and the people around you safe. Boundaries still matter. Responsibility still matters.

I can already hear the counterarguments forming. "But rules are necessary."

Of course they are. Traffic lights are a good idea. Basic agreements keep society running. I get that.

But somewhere along the way, many rules stopped being about safety or fairness and became about control. About keeping systems intact rather than the people inside them. Rules that felt illogical. Unhealthy. Unjust. Way too abstract for natural beings like ourselves. And living by them had its price. We became a little too alike. Too uniform.

Society isn't particularly fond of people who question the script, so I understand how daunting it can feel to rewrite your own. Believe me, been there, done that.

And when you stop pre-censoring yourself to fit into the professional framework and start being clear about who you really are, something shifts. Clarity isn't dangerous. It's magnetic. It attracts opportunities, ideas, collaborations and people that actually fit you. Your people. Your crowd.

And suddenly the game changes. Work becomes more creative. Choices become more aligned. Doors open that you didn't even know existed.

This is where my work lies. Zooming out of what is considered normal. Not trying to fit people into systems, but discovering what environment actually suits them. Rewriting the game, one human being at a time.

This is what it feels like when inner fire ignites again. When joy, inspiration and freedom start running loose inside you. You can feel something bubbling, can't you?

If this made you uncomfortable and curious at the same time, we should probably talk.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred, there are a few ways to go deeper, all free.

UNLEASHED, a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day.

Treasure Hunting, where it all began.

Newsletter, more of this in your inbox, regularly.

All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.

Let's talk CV.

So, let's talk about your curriculum vitae.

Does it actually show who you are? Your real zone of genius, what drives you, what you're good at beyond the job title?

Because most of what makes you brilliant never shows up on LinkedIn anyway.

And that's a missed opportunity. For you, and for the people trying to figure out if they want to work with you.

We all know people who are school-smart and others who never did too great at school, but are life-smart, street-smart, emotionally brilliant, creatively unstoppable. Yet we keep measuring intelligence and success within narrow boxes: grades, degrees, salaries, job titles, career ladders.

And honestly, that's painfully limiting. We're underselling ourselves as a species.

Curriculum Vitae literally means "course of life." Not course of work. Not course of education. Life.

So what would your CV look like if you included everything that actually shaped you? Your resilience. Your survival skills. Your intuition. The lessons learned from failure. The weird talents. The passions. The dreams you'd never dare put on LinkedIn.

Spoiler: it would be pretty damn impressive.

Your zone of genius is almost never captured by professional lingo. It shows up in how you solve problems, how you read a room, how you make people feel seen, how you create movement where others feel stuck.

And when you stop pre-censoring yourself and start being clearer about who you actually are, something shifts. Not just in how others see you. In how you see yourself. Clarity isn't dangerous. It's magnetic. It attracts opportunities, collaborations and people that actually fit you.

So maybe it's time to dust off that CV. Not to impress a recruiter. But to ask yourself honestly: does this still reflect who I am? What would I add if I could? What have I learned, survived, built, felt, figured out, that never made it onto the page?

You don't have to throw out the professional version. Just make it a little more you. A few more glimpses of the real person behind the job titles. That's where the interesting conversations start. For both sides.

I bet nobody ever really asked you these questions. And honestly, I love this part. Watching people rediscover their hidden gems. Not from their rational and critical thinking mind, but from their hearts and their spirits.

This is exactly the kind of work I do. Not polishing résumés, but helping people rediscover the human behind them. If you feel the itch to take another look at who you are and what you actually want, you don't have to do it alone.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred, there are a few ways to go deeper, all free.

UNLEASHED, a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day.

Treasure Hunting, where it all began.

Newsletter, more of this in your inbox, regularly.

All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.

The moment you stop playing the game.

For years I played the game. Certifications, audits, guidelines, exams, accreditations, endless boxes to tick just to be allowed to exist in the room. My whole life actually.

And yes, some structure belongs in life. I am very happy my surgeon and my pilot actually know what they are doing and are being challenged to keep learning.

But somewhere along the way, control systems multiplied and quietly took over. More rules. More measuring. More proving. More pressure. System layered upon system. Until you forget what you actually wanted to do, and more importantly, who you wanted to be. Háve you actually ever really found out what you wanted to be and do in life? Without the context of all the grades and money?

I only see now how deeply this has shaped me. Layer after layer of trying to be acceptable. Professional enough. Legit enough. Safe enough. I defended those structures because I believed my right to exist depended on them. It made people understand me, like me, hire me.

It was exhausting. And honestly, it made me physically sick.

Looking back, I see this step of actively choosing to stop playing the game wasn't courage. It was survival. Staying would have cost me my health. Leaving gave me my life back.

Walking away from that world while building a new business from scratch is not exactly comfortable or the easy way out. Standing outside the system feels risky. Especially after seeing how harsh the consequences can be when you speak up or choose differently.

But something shifted. After being cancelled, judged, or misunderstood while I was only asking questions, there is strangely nothing left to lose. And that is incredibly liberating.

Now I create from somewhere else. Not from job titles or predefined boxes, but from my own source. Conversations happen. Words flow like water. Stories are wanting to be told. I meet people with instant resonance. Sometimes paths drift apart again, and that is fine. Not everyone has to agree on everything. No clinging. No forced belonging. No groupthink.

At the same time, responsibility still matters. Skill still matters. Care still matters. LOVE matters (most of all!). But we have pushed control, grading, testing, competing and auditing into almost every corner of life. From the moment we are born, we are measured and compared.

And in all of that, we forget something essential: we are natural beings trying to live inside a million abstract systems we created ourselves.

Concepts, rules, rankings, frameworks. Money, governments, education. Useful sometimes, but never meant to replace life itself. When those structures become more important than the humans inside them, friction appears. People crack.

I have seen burnout. Illness. Relationships collapsing under the weight of performance and compliance. Suicide even.

We can do better than this. We need to. But first we have to admit we've gone too far. And that we participate in it, often without even noticing.

This is not rebellion for the sake of rebellion. This is choosing health. Freedom. Choosing to create from truth and love instead of fear.

Raw, imperfect, sometimes pretty daunting. And also the most alive I have felt in years.

And if something in you feels friction reading this, maybe that friction is worth listening to.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred, there are a few ways to go deeper, all free.

UNLEASHED, a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day.

Treasure Hunting, where it all began.

Newsletter, more of this in your inbox, regularly.

All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.

Back to our roots

Why reconnecting with your own soil might be the medicine of this time

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about belonging. About soil, actually. My own soil. Home ground.

You’re not born somewhere on earth by accident. There is ancient wisdom in every corner of the world, including the one you grew up in. But in parts of the Western world, much of that knowledge was buried. Witch hunts, religious oppression, and centuries of subtle cultural erasure pushed local traditions, rituals, healing practices, sacred places, and connection to land and water out of daily life.

That erasure was incredibly effective.

And when something disappears, we start looking for it somewhere else.

Globalization brought us incredible things. We can learn from cultures across the planet, share knowledge, travel, taste foods from everywhere, and connect beyond borders. There is beauty in that. But scale has a shadow side too. When everything grows bigger, faster, and farther away, we quietly lose intimacy, resilience, and local knowledge. Many of the problems we face today are, in some way, the result of things becoming too large, too distant, too disconnected from the places we actually live.

And maybe that is why we so often look outward now.

Why do I receive a truly magnificent book from a foreign photographer about my own heritage, Dutch traditional clothing, while we ourselves seem less and less familiar with our own traditions? Are we even interested in it? He saw the beauty of it. It made me incredibly happy and sad at the same time. Why are we so fascinated by distant cultures, yet often barely know the rituals, clothing, or stories of the land beneath our own feet? Are we somehow almost programmed to dismiss it?

So we travel far to find rituals, medicines, clothing, symbols, and ceremonies. We search in indigenous cultures, distant traditions, rainforests, deserts, and mountains. And while there is beauty and wisdom there, and traveling is a magical way to broaden perspective, sometimes I wonder what we have forgotten right under our own feet.

Medicinal herbs grow here too. Healing foods grow here too. Our ancestors also had gods, rituals, initiation rites, seasonal celebrations, tattoos, clothing, and deep practical knowledge of land, water, and weather. They knew when to sow and when to harvest, how to preserve food, which plants healed and which to leave alone.

A good witch, they say, is bound to her own soil. I feel that. That saying hit me like a ton of bricks.

Your microbiome belongs to the biome of the land you live on. The crystals in your body resonate with the minerals in your own sand and stones. That’s not any stranger than the invisible waves we happily use every day through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and radio. Energy moves whether we name it mystical or technological.

I know some people wonder why I write in English if I love where I come from so much. But wanting to share my work beyond borders doesn’t make me less Dutch. Quite the opposite. I once moved only thirty kilometers inland and missed my dunes and the sea so much it hurt. The day I came back, I cried from relief. Walking through the dunes with my father on a beautiful summer evening, we looked at each other and didn’t need words, yet still said it out loud: “This is our ground. We belong here.” We could smell it. We could feel it all around us.

I love mountains, bright blue oceans, palm trees, oriental temples, and Native American designs. I love Greek mythology and ancient Egyptian structures and secrets. I’m naturally drawn to Indonesian dancing and Scottish landscapes. But I also recognize that much of what pulls us toward distant places may be echoes carried within us.

Still, I am here now. And I feel my work belongs here, in the Dutch ‘swamp’. Land of sand, mud, clay, and water. No rocks anywhere, which is actually quite funny when you think about it. With all its hues of green and grey in the colors of the North Sea, the rivers, lakes, and canals. I love this with my whole heart.

Somewhere along the way, we lost not only practical skills and independence, but also a deeper sense of who we are in relation to our own land. And now many of us feel that something is missing. We crave ritual again. Meaning. Connection. And so we often look outward once more.

We drink ayahuasca, tattoo ourselves with symbols from cultures far away, buy supplements shipped across the planet, and collect crystals mined somewhere we will never see. I’m not judging that. I enjoy food and flavors from other cultures too, a lot actually, and I’m not suggesting we must suddenly reject everything global.

I’m simply asking questions.

What if part of what we’re searching for is already here? In our own landscapes, seasons, plants, waters, and traditions. What if reconnection can start locally, quietly, personally? Going on adventures abroad, sure, but searching, finding and honouring the power and beauty of your own sacred soil as well.

Looking back on my life so far, I can see that I always craved that connection somehow. My love of horses grounds me in land, weather, grass, and manure. Riding through the dunes on horseback for hours as a teenager. Being outside in all types of weather. Lots of mud and shit basically. Walking my dog endlessly through my beautiful surroundings behind the dunes. Spending my working life touching bodies, helping them heal. Tending my garden. Always slightly dirty nails, and proud of it. Because I need to feel things directly. My food, dough, soil, animals. Living it. Connecting to it. Building my biome. 

At the same time, I sometimes feel sad realizing I’m trying to relearn knowledge that should have come naturally, like a preschooler rediscovering basics. Knowledge that simply wasn’t passed down any further, somewhere along the line. Funny enough, I now do that relearning alongside my own mother and my children. It’s not always successful, but the effort and intention feel healing in themselves.

I’m all for exploring, for remembering the ancient knowledge your spirit carries. And I’m certainly not condemning people who feel the urge to emigrate or travel a lot. Either by choice or forced by war or scarcity. I’m simply asking: what if our home soil is far more cool and magical than we ever imagined or learned? I can’t wait to keep exploring and rediscovering it.

Strangely, conversations like this are, in these polarized times, often labeled political, sometimes even placed on the “wrong” side of the spectrum, while for me they are simply human. It’s about remembering where we come from, why we are here in the first place, and finding resilience and belonging close to home.

As I write this, I realize my words can easily be interpreted in ways I don’t intend. Still, I’m choosing to share them. Because I believe we can ask questions, express thoughts and feelings, and stay in conversation without needing to pick sides, simply speaking from a place of love.

And I sometimes wonder whether looking at everything primarily through a political lens might make it harder for us to meet each other simply as human beings, connected to the places we call home.

As human beings, a lot of our troubles stem from a disconnect from nature.

Let’s reconnect, as a living being in a living natural environment. And maybe the next step isn’t farther away, but closer than we think.

If this stirred something in you, don’t ignore it.

You might not be looking for more information, you might be looking for reconnection.

This is the kind of work I do. Not fixing you. Not adding more. But helping you remember who you are and where you stand.

If you want reflections like this in your inbox, you can join my letters.
If you feel ready for real movement, book a conversation.

Love, Annemarijn

P.S. The book that sparked this reflection: Between the Sea and the Sky by Jimmy Nelson.

Also very inspiring on ths theme: Zach Bush MD and Vandana Shiva

The Ultimate Power of Being Done

POV: I’m done with authority. Completely done.

The whole concept of someone else reigning over me, telling me how to live, who to be, what to believe… I’ve played that game for lifetimes and it didn’t end well. This time around, things are different. This time, I say what needs to be said. If that chops off my head again, so be it.

I’m not here to be safe. I’m here to be fully present in a way no system can override anymore.

Ninety-nine percent of people will think I’m weird. Fine. I’m not here for them. I’m here for myself, my family, and that one percent who feel something crack open inside when someone speaks without bending.

And let’s not romanticise it. I still feel fear. Often. I just press publish anyway.

Speaking your truth should be normal. Not exceptional. Not risky. Just normal.

Every person who chooses to do it helps someone else remember they can too. That’s how balance shifts. Not through new systems or louder structures, but through people choosing to be real. When I stand in my truth, it creates space for others to stand in theirs.

I know that makes people uncomfortable around me sometimes. So be it. My bottom drive is love, not hate.

Speaking clearly can unsettle people. It’s rarely your words that frighten them. It’s the way your clarity loosens the structures they’ve been leaning on. When you speak without bending, something inside them shifts. The story they’ve been holding onto starts to tremble. And that can feel like danger when you’ve built your life around keeping things steady and familiar.

Keeping the peace. Staying safe.

But speaking your truth in a loving and sovereign way does not add to polarization. It adds nuance. A million extra colours instead of just black or white, pro or con.

Your words are not the threat.

For some people, honesty feels like exposure. Like suddenly there’s nowhere left to hide. That makes sense. We come from eras of inquisition, witch hunts, guillotines, slavery, oppression. Those histories left marks in our nervous systems and our bones. This takes practice. Training that muscle can sting.

Not everyone is ready.

And not everyone is meant to walk beside you or approve of everything you say or do. Let’s bring back healthy disagreement. Since when did that become illegal?

Your job is not to soften your voice so others can stay comfortable. You’re here to live what’s real for you. The people who are meant for you will recognise themselves. They find you faster when you show your true colours. I learned that in real time.

I sometimes struggle with sharing my story online too. Not because I don’t want to be honest, but because I don’t want it to become a performance. That’s real. And yes, it has backfired. It triggers some. And my inner good girl still twitches when she feels disliked.

That’s a muscle too.

It hurts at first. It gets stronger.

Here’s what I realised: I share my stories so you can recognise yourself. Not to centre me, but so that if something I’ve lived through helps you breathe easier, feel less strange, or remember you’re not alone in how you move through this world, then it was worth it.

I’m here to connect.

I don’t feel the need to perform my life for anyone. I have nothing to prove. I’m not trying to look enlightened, polished, ascended, or above anything. The thing I offer is the thing I am living. Alongside you.

I’m human. I laugh. I cry the ugly, snotty kind. I’m a raging dragon more than once a day, and I can be deeply gentle too. I mess things up. I do brilliant things. It’s the same movement.

I live in a good, healthy body on this planet. Not supermodel good. Not Olympic good. But strong enough to grow three beautiful children and litres and litres of full-fat milk. I am madly proud of that. I need warmth, good food, shelter, sleep, love, and yes, money and beautiful earthly things. I’m not pretending otherwise.

I’m not here to float above life. I’m here to embody my little magical godspark on earth.

And embodiment is where my work lives. In the real. In the grounded. In the moments that ask you to show up, especially when it’s uncomfortable.

Somewhere in the middle of this messy, beautiful human life, I’m finding my way and my mission. Navigating the same dense system you are, without trying to escape it. I don’t do role-play. I don’t rescue. I don’t override.

People move because they feel safe enough to see themselves. I won’t call you out. I won’t do the work for you. You’ll have the aha moment yourself.

That’s the deal. And it’s thrilling. And lighter than you think.

Being done with authority is not rebellion. It’s clarity. It’s the moment you stop outsourcing your compass. The moment you realise you don’t need a new hierarchy, just your own spine.

For those who are done pretending. Done shrinking. Done carrying expectations that were never yours.

It’s time.

Time to stand inside your own life. Time to own the game from the inside out.

Each of us. Together, but sovereign.

If you step into my space, I won’t fix you. I’ll hold the mirror steady. You’ll see yourself. And once you see yourself clearly, you move. Not because I pushed you, but because you’re ready.

This round on earth is different, and you know it.

We are different. Less willing to comply out of habit. More willing to choose consciously.

Our children are wired different, for sure.

If something in you sits up a little straighter reading this, that’s not inspiration. That’s recognition.

Come closer if you’re ready to stand in it.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred: I have two free starting points. UNLEASHED is a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day. Treasure Hunting is where I always begin. Both are free. All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.

We Broke Up, But We’re Still Friends

An Adult Love Story About Not Being Your Job Title

Here’s a story from my own front row seat.

Last year asked a lot of me. Not in a dramatic way, but in that unavoidable way where things simply stop fitting. Pretending they still do becomes exhausting. Especially the logistics of it all.

It wasn’t a year of gentle nudges. Some things I let go of consciously. Others were very clearly taken out of my hands by circumstances themselves. Doors didn’t just close, they quietly refused to open again. And other doors opened too. Doors I could not have imagined before. Funny how that works.

What surprised me most wasn’t the messiness or confusion.

It was the relief.

Especially the relief that came with letting go of an identity. A job title. Something I was busy doing, but that didn’t fully reflect who I am anymore. I didn’t realise how much effort it took to keep wearing it, and defending it even, until I finally put it down.

And here’s the nuance that matters: I’m still doing the work.

I just stopped letting it define me.

It shifted from “this is who I am” to “this is something I do, in my own way.” In that space, something else could emerge. I even ended up redefining what I’m doing altogether, on my own terms. That part surprised me too. It feels lighter. More fitting. More me.

This isn’t about career. It’s identity work. And I think it’s time we allow ourselves to separate those two again.

Somewhere along the way we started believing that the most professional, committed, respectable thing to do is to fully become our job. To merge our sense of self with our role, our title, our expertise. As if evolving means betraying what came before. As if letting something go automatically means you no longer love it.

But life changes. We change.
And shedding something doesn’t mean you suddenly hate it.

I still love animals. Deeply.
I still love the osteopathic approach, and I will happily die on that hill if needed. It deserves its place in the medical world. A bigger place even.
I still genuinely love the sessions I have with animals and their caretakers.

What has brought a surprising amount of relief and freedom is redefining what I actually have to give to animals and their people, without anchoring it to the title osteopath. Not because I reject it. Not because I don’t respect it. Quite the opposite.

But what I actually do has evolved so much over the past fifteen years that it no longer fits neatly inside what I once learned or how it’s usually labelled. So I ended up redefining what I’m doing with animals altogether, on my own terms. That part surprised me too. It feels lighter. More fitting.

And yes, it remains a gift that loyal clients and animals continue to find their way to me, despite all my ongoing evolution and experiments.

What I bring is my energy, my intention, my soft, listening approach. That comes with beautiful results. And with real limitations.

Both matter.

Along the way I’ve met so many incredible animals and people, and professionals deeply devoted to their craft. And honestly, I still think it’s one of the coolest things when forces can combine instead of compete. When different approaches are allowed to sit next to each other without needing to prove who’s right.

Letting go of a title doesn’t mean letting go of the work, or the love, or the respect for the field. It simply means giving it permission to evolve instead of freezing it at a point in time that no longer reflects where I am.

Because honestly, I still can’t fully explain what it is that I do. And I couldn’t before either. That used to stress me out.

Now I simply accept that part of my work lives outside neat explanations.

I work on intuitional autopilot. I feel, I listen, I attune, and then I move. And yes, I do it like a boss, with over thirty years of skill and education sitting safely in my brainy parts, fully available when needed. That foundation matters. It’s solid. It’s earned.

But methods, ratios and toolboxes are not the commanders in chief.

Something else is.

Something beyond titles, protocols and explanations. Something that can’t be neatly packaged or copied. And that’s exactly why I’ve stopped trying to explain it in ways that make it smaller.

The people who find their way to me don’t come for a label. Something in them recognises the field, the intention, the presence. And they trust that.

I love them for that.

I’m still very much in the middle of a changing season. I don’t yet know exactly where it’s leading me or what will rise out of it. But for the first time in a long while, that uncertainty feels less like a problem and more like freedom.

Looking back, I can see how much I was hiding behind certain roles. Not because they were wrong, but because they were familiar. Justified. Understandable for others. They gave me something to point at when people asked who I was.

Letting go of that didn’t give me answers. It gave me space.

And I’m still in it. Still shedding. Still listening. Still noticing how life nudges gently at first and then, when ignored, escalates.

I’ve come to trust that when something keeps slipping through your grasp, or keeps not working out as intended, it’s rarely punishment. It’s alignment trying to happen. With or without your cooperation.

So I’m genuinely curious: is there something you’re still doing, but no longer want to be?
A role, a title, an identity that once fit and now feels like effort?

If so, you’re not late. And you’re not broken. You’re probably just mid-shed. Right in the middle of becoming.

Love, Annemarijn (former animal osteopath, now just ‘Annemarijn’)

PS. If something in here stirred: I have two free starting points. UNLEASHED is a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day. Treasure Hunting is where I always begin. Both are free. All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.

Marie Kondo Is Having a Cosmic Moment

On shedding skins, clutter, and the stuff we secretly know needs to go

Everyone loves the idea of big change.

Big moves. Big action. Big life. Cue dramatic music, wind machines, heroic slow motion hair flips.

And yet, if you look honestly at how change actually happens, it’s rarely that cinematic. More often, life moves like a snake. Not galloping forward, but shedding slowly and thoroughly. Sometimes uncomfortably.

And lately, I’ve been feeling that shedding phase everywhere. Not just mentally or emotionally, but almost physically. Like my whole system is quietly asking:

Why am I still carrying all this with me?

Old beliefs. Old identities. Old ways of doing life that once worked perfectly fine but now feel tight. Restrictive. Slightly ridiculous even. Like the jeans from 2014 still folded lovingly in the closet because, you know, maybe one day.

We all have those jeans. And the emotional equivalent.

The job title that once made sense but no longer fits. The relationship dynamics we keep repeating. The way we introduce ourselves at parties. The self-image we polish and maintain even though something inside us has clearly moved on.

And somehow, we keep dragging it all along, hoping it will magically become relevant again.

At some point, though, life stops being subtle.

Closets start overflowing. Calendars get too full. Your brain feels like a browser with fifty tabs open and one of them is playing music but you have no idea which one.

And suddenly, you find yourself on a random Tuesday afternoon pulling everything out of cupboards, asking: why do I even own this?

True story: even I, queen of avoiding overstuffed closets because they feel like emotional commitments, recently found myself emptying drawers and selling half my house online.

When I start voluntarily decluttering, you know something deeper is happening.

And that’s when Marie Kondo’s question sneaks back in, annoyingly effective as ever:

Does this spark joy?

Not polite joy. Not “this looks good on paper” joy. Not “my parents will approve” joy. But real joy. The kind that makes something in you light up.

And here’s the uncomfortable part: sometimes the honest answer is… silence. Or a hesitant “I have no idea.” But that’s not failure. That’s awareness.

Because this phase isn’t about fixing your life. It’s about taking inventory. Seeing what still belongs. What actually supports you. What feels alive. And what you’ve simply been carrying out of habit, loyalty to a past version of yourself, or fear of letting go.

The temptation, of course, is to skip this part and rush into action. New plans, new goals, big decisions. Charge ahead and hope clarity catches up later. But action without clarity is just chaos in activewear. It feels exciting for about five minutes, and then your nervous system taps out.

Sometimes the bravest move isn’t charging forward, but stopping long enough to ask: what am I still dragging into a future that clearly asks for a lighter version of me?

And shedding isn’t dramatic. Often it’s deeply ordinary.

It looks like cancelling things that drain you. Cleaning out closets. Ending conversations that go nowhere. Saying no more often. Admitting certain dreams have changed shape.

It’s telling yourself the truth about what still fits and what doesn’t. Clothes. Roles. Relationships. Expectations. Self-images.

And yes, that can feel uncomfortable. Because letting go of something familiar, even when it no longer serves you, still feels like loss. But underneath the clutter, something else waits.

Space.
Relief.
Room to breathe again.

And sometimes, unexpectedly, playfulness returns. Curiosity. Energy you didn’t realise you’d been missing. Not because you added something new, but because you finally stopped carrying what was already over.

So maybe this season, whatever season you’re personally in, isn’t asking you to run faster or achieve more. Maybe it’s simply inviting you to shed. To clean out what no longer fits. To tell yourself the truth.

And to notice, underneath it all, what still sparks real joy.

Because chances are, something alive in you has been waiting patiently for space.

Ready to find out?

You know where to find me.

Love, Annemarijn

PS. If something in here stirred: I have two free starting points. UNLEASHED is a 7-day email challenge, one sharp question a day. Treasure Hunting is where I always begin. Both are free. All you need is honesty, a sense of adventure, and a little fire starting to glow in your belly.